{"id":1229,"date":"2007-08-22T11:41:13","date_gmt":"2007-08-22T16:41:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1229"},"modified":"2007-10-05T09:34:47","modified_gmt":"2007-10-05T14:34:47","slug":"1229","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1229","title":{"rendered":"Because They Say So"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve always admired brain surgeons and constitutional lawyers.<\/p>\n

So over the weekend, at a ceremony attended by friends and loved ones, I had both the Medical Doctor and Doctor of Laws degrees bestowed on me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

My parents were so proud; at last, I can start making something of myself.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the celebration was short-lived.\u00a0 There is so much work to do; cranial aneurisms to heal; rights to defend.\u00a0<\/p>\n

As if that weren’t enough, I grabbed a Ph. D in psychology – because I figure I can help people solve their lifes’ issues much more effectively if I’m properly credentialed.\u00a0 And my certification as a Mechanical Engineer also came through; what with all the bridges and stuff to rebuild, I figure I got some more time to set aside on my calendar.<\/p>\n

Whew!<\/p>\n

———-<\/p>\n

Oh, you’re probably wondering about all those fuddy-duddy “licensing bodies”, and whether or not they’d actually grant (or allow the granting of) the degrees to someone who took one semester of college biology, has never taken a law class, whose entire background in psychology is watching two episodes of “Doctor Phil”, and who hated math class with a purple passion?<\/p>\n

Licensing, scheissensing.\u00a0 I am a brain surgeon\/lawyer\/psychologist\/mechanical engineer.<\/p>\n

I have willed it to be so.<\/p>\n

———-<\/p>\n

While I am all of those things, one thing I’m not is Catholic.\u00a0 Nothing against Catholicism, of course; I believe Pope John Paul II agreed with the German Lutherans, finally, that the road to salvation as a Christian can be made clear to people through Catholic, Protestant, or heck, even Orthodox teachings.\u00a0 I mean, for crying out loud, we’re all on the same team – right?<\/p>\n

I’m a Presbyterian.\u00a0 I don’t always agree with the Presbyterian Church in the USA’s governing General Assembly’s decisions<\/a>, but the General Assembly doesn’t claim (in Presbyterian governance, indeed,\u00a0can’t<\/em> claim) to have authority over what the Bible – the revealed word of God – really means, either, so I can ignore them at my eternal leisure.\u00a0 Nothing the GA decides or believes has anything to do with my eternal life; they move the money around, install or remove people, and set larger, temporal goals for the church – as an administrative and governing<\/em>, rather than theological body.<\/p>\n

And as I’ve noted in this space in the past, a number of Presbyterian ministers have been very <\/em>important figures in my life; Revs. Bill King, Mick Burns and Jim Jacobson stand out, of course, as people who had an immense, permanent affect on how I lived my life, but there have been many others.\u00a0 All of them married, some of them women.\u00a0 Which is, of course, no-go among Catholics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ordaining women – or gays, or gay women for that matter – is neither a positive nor a negative, in my book.\u00a0 I do understand Catholics’ theological injunction against it (as well as the history of exceptions to that injunction).\u00a0 But – and here’s a rather important caveat – it’s their church! <\/em>The Vatican sets the rules, whether they’re right or wrong.\u00a0 Just like those paternalistic blowhards at the State Medical and psychological licensing authorities, or at the Bar Association, or the American Society of Mechanical Engineers, they decide what the standards are<\/em> for inclusion.<\/p>\n

And, rightly or wrongly (in that great sense that none of us will really discover the answers for until we’ve finally gotten into the afterlife), the Vatican says “nyet<\/em>” to women behind the altar.<\/p>\n

I might disagree.\u00a0 I might even make a case for why women should be ordained.<\/p>\n

But while I might declare myself, or some woman, to be\u00a0a Roman Catholic Priest, the people who actually get to decide who is or is not a Roman Catholic Priest might take umbrage – as, in theory, the Minnesota Bar, Medical and Psych Licensing boards and the ASME might do as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“So what?”<\/p>\n

———-<\/p>\n

Well, the Minnesota Monitor’s coverage<\/a> of the recent “ordination” of a couple of female “priests” approaches the issue with about the same gravity as I do being a Doctor, Lawyer, Psychogist or Engineer.<\/p>\n

And there are really two ways to approach this story – via the “Mitch Is An Engineer”-like triteness that’d allow people to make such a unilateral declaration, and via the “coverage” it’s gotten from the local Sorosphere.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Let’s look at Andy Birkey’s story in the MinMon:<\/p>\n

Two women were ordained to the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church at an event in Minneapolis last weekend. The ordination of Judith McKloskey and Alice Marie Iaquinta marked their addition to the approximately 60 other women who have been ordained nationwide. The Vatican, the Catholic Church’s highest authority, does not recognize the ordination of women into the priesthood, and in Iaquinta’s case, the ordination could result in excommunication.<\/p>\n

The West Bend, Wis., woman’s ordination has raised the ire of the Catholic Church in that region. Archdiocese of Milwaukee Communications Director Kathleen Hohl told WTMJ, an NBC affiliate in Milwaukee that they will turn Iaquinta’s information over to the Vatican.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

“It is our duty and obligation to forward this information to the Vatican for consideration,” said Hohl.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

First with the trite.\u00a0 While I’m not unsympathetic with the notion of female clergy, I’m also not a Catholic, much less one of the Bishops, Cardinals or Popes that makes these sorts of decisions for the Catholic Church.\u00a0 They make the rules (in the Catholic Church, at any rate).\u00a0 So – if the church’s rules say “guys only”, and your drive to see women (or gays, or married people or whatever) ordained is more important than your membership in that church, why be a Catholic at all?\u00a0 There are many Protestant denominations that will welcome one.\u00a0 Or why not be intellectually honest and cast your lot with a secessionist American Catholic movement, and show the Vatican who’s really<\/em> boss?<\/p>\n

And saying “women used to be priests” is hardly a convincing argument.\u00a0 Appealing to what is, after all, ancient history (and disputed history at that) is a dumb justification; things change.\u00a0 “It used to be legal” could be used to justify polygamy, slavery, burning at the stake, infanticide, suttee, <\/em>honor killing…and while ordaining women is nothing like any of those horrors, it’s also – ahem – not the way the body that governs that church does things anymore.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Now let’s turn to Birkey’s article.\u00a0\u00a0I obviously disagree with him on most every political issue, but he’s not a bad writer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But this article?\u00a0 The women weren’t<\/em> “ordained to the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church”, as Birkey claimed in his lede.\u00a0 They may have consecrated themselves to serve God in the way they felt called upon to do so.\u00a0 They may have even been ordained into some ideo-theological construct that may eventually morph into the long-promised American Catholic Church (“All of the contraception, none of the guilt!\u00a0 Now with female priests”).\u00a0 They may even legitimately be considered “protesters” against the Catholic injunction against female priests.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But, unless the Vatican rammed through a rule change when I wasn’t looking (which I rarely am, but on the other hand the Vatican rarely “rams” anything through), they are most assurely not “<\/em>ordained catholic priests”.<\/p>\n

Now, as I said, Andy’s not a bad writer.\u00a0 But this piece showcases the perils of viewing “news” and “journalism” through an entirely partisan lens.\u00a0 Birkey’s main issue is gay rights.\u00a0 The Catholic Church is a lightning rod for gay activism, as it is the mainstream church that has moved the least toward accomodation (barring many American evangelical denominations – but gay activists don’t seem to be trying to win over the Southern Baptists all that hard, either).\u00a0 The Catholics draw, as a result, all sorts of protests, both crude (paintings of the Virgin Mary done in dung) and fairly sophisticated (activists like McKloskey and Iaquinta and their attempt to co-opt and\/or skirt the church’s rules).\u00a0 And Birkey’s story plays into that, in ways obvious enough to cause one to smack one’s head.\u00a0\u00a0Classic example – for Andy Birkey to say they were “ordained to the priesthood of the Roman Catholic Church” can be seen as either “wishful thinking” or “serving as the womens’ PR agent”.\u00a0 McKloskey and Iaquinta were no more “ordained into the Roman Catholic Church” than I was “admitted to the bar” for claiming that I was a lawyer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So Birkey’s story turned, in its lede, served as a vehicle for McKloskey and Iaquinta’s wishes – we could call it “propaganda”, in the strictest and least-prejudicial sense of the term.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Which is his right as a partisan activist writer, to be sure, but\u00a0it is to “journalism” as I am to brain surgery, engineering, psychology and the law, and as Judith McKloskey and Alice Marie Iaquinta\u00a0are to the Roman Catholic priesthood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve always admired brain surgeons and constitutional lawyers. So over the weekend, at a ceremony attended by friends and loved ones, I had both the Medical Doctor and Doctor of Laws degrees bestowed on me.\u00a0 My parents were so proud; at last, I can start making something of myself.\u00a0 But the celebration was short-lived.\u00a0 There […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1229","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faiths-and-their-followers","category-media"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1229","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1229"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1229\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}